A forum for those current students who are or may be transferring from one school to another. Post any questions, advice, or other transfer related comments here.

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Anonymous posting is only available to the creator of each thread. The anonymous posting feature is intended to permit the solicitation of anonymous advice regarding the transfer application process, chances of being accepted, etc. Unacceptable uses include: testing the feature, questions which are clearly fake or hypothetical in nature, harassing other users, etc. Posters should also read and understand the announcements posted at the top of the Transfers forum prior to using the anonymous feature.

Preface: The answers you get for whether transferring is worth it will vary based on who you ask. For the [EDIT- around 30%] of transfers that got 2L summer associate offers at firms that they would have had no shot at if they would have remained at their old school, transferring is hand down worth it and they will tell you that, and I don’t dispute that one bit.

I also want to address the “t14 isn’t a golden ticket” comment first, since I know it is coming. I recognized that transferring to a t10 wouldn’t be any sort of a golden ticket and actually believed that I may very well not be able to get an offer at a large firm out of OCI. However, what I did believe is that I would be able to find something that pays more then what I made as working at the local DMV while in college. In fact, I would believe that everything is good and worked out if I could even find a job paying somewhere between $70-80K /year out of law school. I came to law school because I want to be a lawyer, and not because I though I was going to get rich, and even that salary post-taxes and post-student loan repayment would leave me with enough money to live close to as well as the average American.

Lastly, I am disclosing quite a bit of information here so I would appreciate it if you guys would refrain from trying to guess what school I go to (I’m already narrowing it down to 3 schools).

Background: Just to begin I am a t10 transfer student and transferred from a t3.

[EDIT]

After my first year I was in the top 5 students in my class at my t3 (top 2%). I pulled straight As my entire first year (i.e. As and A-s). I had several book awards (highest grade in the class) in several classes, including LRW both semesters. I also had the best memo/brief both semesters.

Comparing my current GPA at my t10 to the graduating class last year, I am roughly at top 5% of my class currently at my t10. However, I am not on a journal (I only applied to law review, which is an extremely competitive process for transfers, and really didn’t like the idea of wasting countless mind numbing hours citechecking other people’s citations unless there was a real benefit to it, such as the one that law review offers). However, what that means is clerking is not going to be an option – I would like to get onto a journal now, but it’s too late.

My transfer experience: Academic experienceAcademically, I really like my new school. It is like the difference between night and day between my t3 and this t10. Literally everything is better from the clinics offered, the professors, the general student body, etc. I think the most rewarding part is that professors don’t treat students like idiots here like they did at my t3 (which, admittedly, a lot of my classmates weren’t the brightest of people). However, I’m leaving this discussion brief because I no one spends close to $70K /year for an academic experience. The only pragmatic reason for spending this kind of money at your transfer school is for career prospects that offset that cost.

Career prospectsIn terms of career prospects, I really see absolutely no appreciable benefit from transferring. The way I look at this, I spent $140K for a whole 6 interviews via OCI. That’s right, 6 fucking interviews, across a span of 5 days (although most of the employers came on the first couple days)! [EDIT]. However, when the interview list came back I got a total of 11 interviews total, and out of that 11 interviews, 5 were the “reach” top of the vault chart firms (leaving me with 6 OCI interviews with firms I had a shot at). However, at this point I didn’t let that get to me and just started a mailing list to direct send to firms.

During the fall after the OCI list was released I applied to every single firm on NALP in one major market (either NY, LA, or Chicago – I’m trying to retain some anonymity here), and applied to every single NALP firm in 3 other states, including the one my school is in. Additionally, I applied to every firm that was over the size of 10 attorneys in that same major market. Then I applied to every single federal government agency that there is, as well as a few state agencies in NY/LA/Chicago. I ended up a total of 1 phone screening interview from a firm in the state my school is in, and 1 other screening interview. Besides that, I was rejected from every single employer I applied to. Then later, I was rejected by every single firm I interviewed with at OCI as well as those 2 firms I interviewed with from outside of OCI. Altogether, I am sure I applied to over 500 legal employers. I also want to note that my resume and cover letter were read thoroughly and “cleaned up” as much as possible by the CSO (I had them read it 3 times), so there wasn’t just some typo or other mistakes on there – both of those were literally as clean at they could be. After this point I went into our CSO and talked about this and they really had little advice for me. They told me to try to apply to some in-house positions, but there were literally none listed at this point.

After spring grades came out (had straight As here at my t10 – around top 5%), I applied pretty heavily again. I should note that grades didn’t come out until February) I applied to:

-A total of 120 judges for judicial internships (including all federal judges in those locations, and the state supreme court, and state court of appeals in the state I am in),

-Every single corporate in-house position listed on our board for any state (around 50 listings),

-I reapplied to every 10+ law firm in NY/LA/Chicago that I previously applied to (including all shitlaw practices),

-Every single law firm over 2 attorneys in NY/LA/Chicago (including all shitlaw practices),

-Every single 10+ law firm in 2 other states (including the one my school is in) (including all shitlaw practices), and

- 10 public defender’s offices

Altogether, I am sure I applied to around 1500 legal employers in the spring. I ended up getting a total of 7 interviews out of the judges I applied to, 1 interview with one of the PDs offices, 1 offer from the local PDs office, and 1 law firm interview in the state my school is in. Besides that, I received rejection letters from every single place I applied to (you should have just seen my mail & email boxes for the first couple weeks after applying to all these places).

The law firm that I got an interview from practices in personal injury/medical malpractice and is approximately a size of 20 attorneys. I ended up interviewing with the law firm first out of everything and received an offer via email by the time I came home from the interview. I talked to the CSO and they told me that I should accept the offer and just withdraw elsewhere since it would be my best bet if I want to work at some firm post-graduation, and therefore, I did just that. I fucking hate personal injury and have absolutely no desire to practice in this area of law (and really don’t want to be in this state either – I just transferred here with the thought it was “national” in placement and would allow me to find work in my home state of NY/CA/IL). Additionally, I am being compensated the same this summer as a first-year associate at this firm, which comes out to $37K /year!! The sad thing about this is that I don’t doubt for a second that I would not have gotten this summer associateship had I not transferred and had the grades I do at my current school, and the grades I did in LRW last year.

The financial aspectFINANCIALLY, I WOULD SAY THAT TRANSFERRING IS HANDS DOWN THE WORST DECISION OF MY LIFE. I was about $40K in debt after my first year. I will admit that I went against the grain in terms of advice given here and I went to law school with the mentality that I would either make top 5 people at the end of the first year or I would drop out. I mean I graduated with a 4.0 out of my undergrad intuition across my last 70 credits (although my LSAC GPA was terrible since I transferred to my graduating institution after spending 3.5 years trying to figure out what I wanted to do – it was barely over a 3.0 according to LSAC), and graduated with an MBA with a 4.0 as well. Luckily (sic- unluckily?) it worked out and I actually made top 5 people. I was offered a full-ride after my first year of law school and that would have allowed me to leave law school with $40K in student debt + interest. By transferring I am now going to be around $200K in student debt total (including interest across those 2 years) and job prospects that are shittier than what my options were leaving undergrad.

Leaving undergrad I posted my resume on my school’s career services bulletin (I wasn’t actively searching for work at that point since I knew I wanted to attend grad school), and my best job offer from that was $60K + a company car in a major city. As of right now I believe that I would be extremely lucky to leave law school with even a $40K /year attorney job, and after taxes that would roughly come out to $27K /year, after my $25K /year loan repayment I would be left with $2K /year to live on (this assumes a typical 10 year repayment). Personally, I don’t want to repay these student loans for the next 25 years via IBR for private practice, only to get hit with a tax bill that’s going to be so large that it will swallow any assets I accumulate by then (such as a house, etc). I also don’t like the idea of repaying my student loans when I am into my 50s, and the possibility of going bankrupt when I get hit with the tax bill. Therefore, I think my best option is going to be to go back to my DMV job because it would allow me to work a reasonable 40 hours a week, provide great benefits, and most importantly it would fall under the 10 year public service IBR debt forgiveness. What makes me angry about this whole situation is that by doing that I will have effectively thrown out both my BSB and MBA degrees, as well as my law degree, since I will have no possibility of getting a job in the business or legal field after spending 10 years working at a DMV.

How did other transfers fare ITE? At my school it seems like it was somewhere around [EDIT 30%] of the transfers that managed to get some type of summer associateship out of OCI (could be slightly better/worse—I don’t know every transfer). I heard it was a lot worse at other law schools for transfers. Also, out of the transfers that did get something from OCI many of them fall into either the URM category or LBGT category. Also, people who did 1L SAs got 2L SAs (not really a huge surprise). Overall, whether it’s worth it: it’s really tough justifying $200K in debt for what amounts to a coin toss. I mean it’s literally a complete coin toss bet because all of us transfers had stellar 1L grades; yet, half of us got screwed by the economy. What I can tell you is that this is not how it was last year for t14 transfers, and I wouldn’t have transferred if I knew I was up against [worse than] 50/50 odds that I would end up with a lifetime of student debt and no reasonable method of repaying it.

Final NoteI also want to note that my purpose of starting this thread is not to try and convince people not to transfer. After all, if you are accepted into a t14 from a lower ranked school you obviously did extremely well your first year and deserve to go somewhere better. However, I do want people to know what kind of odds they are up against (something better then what you would find on the school’s “career statistics”), and the risk they are taking by transferring ITE.

Last edited by t14underground on Sat Aug 07, 2010 8:48 am, edited 2 times in total.

It sounds like you were in close contact with your school's CSO throughout this process. Did they offer any insight into why your OCI outcome deviated from their expectations?

Did you notice any influence from the rank of the original institution for incoming transfers? I.e., you noted that you transferred from a T3. Did others Transferring from T2 / T1 / T20 have different outcomes?

Given that you did not work during your first summer, do you feel your experience is applicable to others who did? What did the CSO say about your lack of 1L summer experience going into the OCI process.

Is working on a journal other than the flagship law review really as useless as you make it out to be? I may be misreading your post, but you seem to be implying that had you been on a journal, even if not the best one, you might have a shot at a clerkship now.

Regardless of the answers to any of these questions, thanks for posting your experience. It is a valuable datapoint.

Possibilities:1. You are a flame that is trying to get high numbered transfers on here to not apply so you have less competition; or2. You are going through some trouble right now.

If it is 2. then I highly recommend not giving up so early like this. A top 10 law degree will get you a legal job. While career statistics are not always reliable they do point out how lower ranked schools, when they post a 90% job placement rating, are posting for 9 months after graduation and have the dreaded "business and industry" category. At your T10 your school will likely have 99% of the class placed AT GRADUATION and it's likely those jobs ain't flippin' burgers.

I have never written so much after taking an ambien, forgive me if it sounds as weird as it seems to me.

I see a not so fun theme developing here: I have to finish my final brief in the next 3 weeks. This is my kill self time. Then, I can either stay here and be on LR or I can transfer and not be on LR........but actually not now b/c it seems that I'll not only have to do horrific legal writing, but it will be for some crap secondary.

Lonagan wrote:It sounds like you were in close contact with your school's CSO throughout this process. Did they offer any insight into why your OCI outcome deviated from their expectations?

Did you notice any influence from the rank of the original institution for incoming transfers? I.e., you noted that you transferred from a T3. Did others Transferring from T2 / T1 / T20 have different outcomes?

Given that you did not work during your first summer, do you feel your experience is applicable to others who did? What did the CSO say about your lack of 1L summer experience going into the OCI process. [/quote]

Honestly, I felt the lack of 1L work experience was the biggest issue. Our CSO almost seemed to disagree when I asked them about it (she gave me the head nod and then didn't say anything about lack of work experience). The CSO said the reason was grades, as did a few of the interviewers that I emailed post-OCI (they were all alumni from here so I figured I would ask). CSO told me that my school was strong in the state I was in and the top students there in a good economy are able to find work elsewhere, but in a bad economy like this one, where even half their students aren't finding work, that my school just got squeezed. In other words, according to the CSO, the employers looked at me during the fall the same way that they would looked at me had I just sent a resume to them applying for a job (and not transferred) and the problem was that they just weren't looking to hire students from my t3 school. I probably would have had a shot at some of the regional firms in the state my t3 school was in (since it was regionally strong), but by leaving to transfer I pretty much cut off all ties I had to that state (since I am originally from NY/IL/CA) -- and having substantial ties to a state are a really big thing this year since firms don't want to pay 2L to work one summer and then go elsewhere after the graduate when they realize that they are not happy in that state.

To answer your second question- I want to say that it wasn't as much necessarily about the rank of the school, but more about applying to firms where the old school was regionally strong. E.g. we had a student here who transferred into from a local t4 and got 2 offers with firms in the state. The biggest difference between me and him is that he is originally from the state we are in and that t4 is regionally strong here (albeit, a very regional school). What messes this up a bit were the students that are URMs or LBGT (our transfer class was small and out of that students in those 2 categories comprised of probably 20-25% of our transfer class), who got offers where they wouldn't have otherwise (i.e. not in the region that their old school was regionally strong). Also, the one student who had a 1L SA got a 2L SA. Then there were a couple people that got offers in states where their school that they transferred from wasn't regionally strong. So I really don't know what to make of all that.

I'm not sure how applicable my specific experience is in comparison to students that did work their 1L summer. But like I said, everyone in the transfer class worked their first summer (doing something law related), and only half got offers at firms. So obviously my transfer classmates' experiences this year area applicable to transfers that work their 1L summer. My belief is that working your 1L summer is definitely not a guarantee that you will get an offer out of OCI/your fall job search as a transfer, but not working your 1L summer is a guarantee that you won't get anything out of OCI/your fall job search.

As for my spring results- the issue is that virtually no law firms were hiring anywhere in the spring. Every firm recruited in the fall. What that means is that my spring grades really don't matter in terms of finding a 2L SA, since those spots where already filled up (which will be true for any of you as well).

Lonagan wrote:Is working on a journal other than the flagship law review really as useless as you make it out to be? I may be misreading your post, but you seem to be implying that had you been on a journal, even if not the best one, you might have a shot at a clerkship now.

Regardless of the answers to any of these questions, thanks for posting your experience. It is a valuable datapoint.

The thing is working on a journal would not have been helpful for OCI since we didn't get our write-on results until well after OCI. That is true for any journal, including law review. But the benefit of being on a law review at a t14 is that you can put that on your resume and your profile at the firm you end up at for the rest of your life -- that's a pretty big thing. Additionally, being on law review would have been substantially helpful for the fall job search outside of OCI (obviously there is some benefit to being on any journal for that as well, but to me it didn't seem like that benefit was significant enough to offset the pain of the mind numbing citechecking requirements)

However, working on a journal is pretty much a requirement if you want to clerk, and being at top 5% at my t10 + a secondary journal would definitely put me in a better position for clerking. The reason I didn't apply to secondary journals is because I don't really want to clerk and never even thought of it until now because it's a backdoor into a law firm.

A'nold wrote:Possibilities:1. You are a flame that is trying to get high numbered transfers on here to not apply so you have less competition; or2. You are going through some trouble right now.

If it is 2. then I highly recommend not giving up so early like this. A top 10 law degree will get you a legal job. While career statistics are not always reliable they do point out how lower ranked schools, when they post a 90% job placement rating, are posting for 9 months after graduation and have the dreaded "business and industry" category. At your T10 your school will likely have 99% of the class placed AT GRADUATION and it's likely those jobs ain't flippin' burgers.

I have never written so much after taking an ambien, forgive me if it sounds as weird as it seems to me.

I see a not so fun theme developing here: I have to finish my final brief in the next 3 weeks. This is my kill self time. Then, I can either stay here and be on LR or I can transfer and not be on LR........but actually not now b/c it seems that I'll not only have to do horrific legal writing, but it will be for some crap secondary.

lol. I promise you that I am not a flame. I've actually talked to you via PM before under my other moniker (but I can't out myself by posting on it here since it is the same as one of my email addresses).

I never said anything about giving up. It's a little too late to drop out now with how much debt I am in. Obviously, I am going to do everything I can to try to find a permanent position this upcoming fall, but if my options are either to work at a personal injury/medical malpractice firm for $37K /year or go back to working at the DMV, I think the latter is the better option (because of public service IBR).

A'nold wrote:Possibilities:1. You are a flame that is trying to get high numbered transfers on here to not apply so you have less competition; or2. You are going through some trouble right now.

If it is 2. then I highly recommend not giving up so early like this. A top 10 law degree will get you a legal job. While career statistics are not always reliable they do point out how lower ranked schools, when they post a 90% job placement rating, are posting for 9 months after graduation and have the dreaded "business and industry" category. At your T10 your school will likely have 99% of the class placed AT GRADUATION and it's likely those jobs ain't flippin' burgers.

I have never written so much after taking an ambien, forgive me if it sounds as weird as it seems to me.

I see a not so fun theme developing here: I have to finish my final brief in the next 3 weeks. This is my kill self time. Then, I can either stay here and be on LR or I can transfer and not be on LR........but actually not now b/c it seems that I'll not only have to do horrific legal writing, but it will be for some crap secondary.

lol. I promise you that I am not a flame. I've actually talked to you via PM before under my other moniker (but I can't out myself by posting on it here since it is the same as one of my email addresses).

I never said anything about giving up. It's a little too late to drop out now with how much debt I am in. Obviously, I am going to do everything I can to try to find a permanent position this upcoming fall, but if my options are either to work at a personal injury/medical malpractice firm for $37K /year or go back to working at the DMV, I think the latter is the better option (because of public service IBR).

LOL, I don't even remember writing that stuff. Ambien really makes me weird if I stay up over a half hour after I take it.

Anyway, I really don't think the DMV is the answer. Why not just start out at a county prosecutor's office or Attorney General's office or SOMETHING. That's what make me think flame, not a lot of what you said, the DMV thing.

apper123 wrote:So if you blame your not getting a job on having no 1L summer experience... why advise so strongly against transferring?

Am I to read into this... "transferring is a great decision as long as you have good 1L summer job experience"?

Also, is it possible you just don't interview well? I mean these people don't waste their time interviewing you if they don't think you have a chance at the job.

First off, like I said before, my purpose here isn't to advise you for or against transferring. That's your personal choice. I just want to provide you with some better data to make your decision with then what you will find on your school's website under "career statistics," which aren't particularly helpful once you realize every school reports a median salary of $160K.

I was trying to be clear on this point, but it seems like I wasn't based on this question. Around 70% of the transfer class here struck out. Everyone worked last summer doing something legal related except me. That suggests 1L summer job experience + transferring does NOT equal a 2L SA for a lot of people.

I don't think being a bad interviewer was my problem based on the feedback that I got from the interviewers that replied to me emails post-OCI (e.g. one said that she "enjoyed meeting with me ... but that she was only one person and a committee makes the decisions for callbacks" ... something along the lines of "it was your grades"). Additionally, it is difficult to understand how 500+ employers that rejected my application last fall, and 1500+ employers that rejected my application this spring would be able to reject my application based on being a bad interviewer solely based on my resume and cover letter.

If you want another datapoint, search for a guy on here with the moniker "totransferornot." If I recall properly he was top 1% at UWisconsin (not a bad school to begin with), transferred to UChicago, got onto a secondary journal at UChicago, and worked for a federal judge last summer and he said that he had a total of 1 offer and it came really late in the process. Just think about how close that was.

But it sounds like you already made your decision towards transferring and I wish you the best of luck next year (hopefully you'll do better than I did this year).

Last edited by t14underground on Sat Aug 07, 2010 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

A'nold wrote:Possibilities:1. You are a flame that is trying to get high numbered transfers on here to not apply so you have less competition; or2. You are going through some trouble right now.

If it is 2. then I highly recommend not giving up so early like this. A top 10 law degree will get you a legal job. While career statistics are not always reliable they do point out how lower ranked schools, when they post a 90% job placement rating, are posting for 9 months after graduation and have the dreaded "business and industry" category. At your T10 your school will likely have 99% of the class placed AT GRADUATION and it's likely those jobs ain't flippin' burgers.

I have never written so much after taking an ambien, forgive me if it sounds as weird as it seems to me.

I see a not so fun theme developing here: I have to finish my final brief in the next 3 weeks. This is my kill self time. Then, I can either stay here and be on LR or I can transfer and not be on LR........but actually not now b/c it seems that I'll not only have to do horrific legal writing, but it will be for some crap secondary.

lol. I promise you that I am not a flame. I've actually talked to you via PM before under my other moniker (but I can't out myself by posting on it here since it is the same as one of my email addresses).

I never said anything about giving up. It's a little too late to drop out now with how much debt I am in. Obviously, I am going to do everything I can to try to find a permanent position this upcoming fall, but if my options are either to work at a personal injury/medical malpractice firm for $37K /year or go back to working at the DMV, I think the latter is the better option (because of public service IBR).

LOL, I don't even remember writing that stuff. Ambien really makes me weird if I stay up over a half hour after I take it.

Anyway, I really don't think the DMV is the answer. Why not just start out at a county prosecutor's office or Attorney General's office or SOMETHING. That's what make me think flame, not a lot of what you said, the DMV thing.

The AG's office already rejected my application, twice (once in the fall and once in the spring). I even applied for the fall semester (when no one applies for internships) and they rejected that. Public service organizations don't really seem to be hiring a whole lot this year and I know they are getting bombed with resumes now that everyone else is trying to use that as an outlet since biglaw didn't work out for so many people.

The other reason is stress. From what I've read, working at the county prosecutor's office isn't exactly a walk in the park and that they tend to work a lot of hours often and it seems to pay about the same or less then what I was making at the DMV, while working slightly under 40 hours a week at the DMV.

DMV does not make sense even w/ your loan repayment issue. You implicitly admit that it would be shortsighted by saying after working 10 years at the DMV you would not be able to get a legit job using your JD (or MBA?). Whereas taking a legal job that is approx. the same in terms of pay as the DMV job (minus the public service qualification) has upward mobility and won't shut you out of future legal work since you would actually be doing legal work; which appears to have been the problem haunting you all along.

Or better yet - just get a PI legal job and quit citing the DM-freakin-V. Yeah its hard to get a job these days but getting a PI job is not like getting Big Law and you can't tell me that your T-14 school is incapable of getting you a PI job by graduation.

DMV does not make sense even w/ your loan repayment issue. You implicitly admit that it would be shortsighted by saying after working 10 years at the DMV you would not be able to get a legit job using your JD (or MBA?). Whereas taking a legal job that is approx. the same in terms of pay as the DMV job (minus the public service qualification) has upward mobility and won't shut you out of future legal work since you would actually be doing legal work; which appears to have been the problem haunting you all along.

Or better yet - just get a PI legal job and quit citing the DM-freakin-V. Yeah its hard to get a job these days but getting a PI job is not like getting Big Law and you can't tell me that your T-14 school is incapable of getting you a PI job by graduation.

Well I'll see what happens next year in terms of finding something. I haven't really been to interested in PI work is why I haven't applied much broader then all the federal government agencies, which have attorneys, some state and country PD positions this year.

I probably should have mentioned this, but I do keep citing to the "DMV," and by that I don't mean the actual DMV (where I worked was just so unique that any employer that saw this that I applied to would be able to out me). I worked at some civil service position for the federal government where I was salaried and typically worked around 25 hours a week for the equivalent of $55K /year (I never worked a full year since I dropped to working 2 days a week, when school was in session, in UG). And it was actually a pretty fun job. Like you said, it doesn't make a ton of sense to go back to this if I want to keep my options open in terms of doing something legal after the 10 years, but the thought of potentially working 50+ hours a week at some prosecutors office (something I would truly hate) for $45K /year seems daunting to me right now. It's probably the right decision in the end, but just a bit hard to swallow right now (i.e. the fact that I will work more hours, enjoy my job less, and make less money then I did while with a high school degree). However, I have also been considering the possibility of going back to working at the "DMV" when I graduate and volunteering a few hours at some PI organizations to get legal experience (I guess when you only work 25 hours a week you have a lot of free-time). In either scenario, this is definitely not what I thought my options would be like when I transferred into the t10, and really hope things turn around next fall (even if a midsize firm would pay at least $70-80K /year and allow me to repay my student loans while doing the type of work I actually want to do).

I have a # of friends at NU that had very similar transfer experiences. This is not uncommon. During OCI, many firms failed to give full faith and credit to transfers from lowly rated T2's that finished in the top 5-10%. The thought process being that the firms wouldn't have hired them in the first place so why hire them now just b/c they transfered to NU.

30 bids and only 11 interviews at a T10. I don't want to out OP but doesn't that narrow it down to which school you go to? I could be mistaken though, maybe you just got outbid by other people?

The consensus seems that across the board transfers are not doing as well as expected. The TLS consensus pre-ITE was that top grades at lower ranked schools = median at transfer school. However since median is dicey for biglaw that means things are bad for transfers.

For a complete pessimist (or maybe realistic view for c/o 2011), transferring = buying an interview with firms that otherwise wouldn't go to your OCI nor look at your resume. I think it definitely matters what school you transferred from. For example if you're targeting NY and you did extremely well at say Cardozo and transferred to Chicago, the firm will be able to compare your grades with past Cardozo hires. If you're transferring from a school that has zero to no alums at the firm, they have nothing to compare you to and might not take the chance when there are boatload of other students to choose from.

legends159 wrote:30 bids and only 11 interviews at a T10. I don't want to out OP but doesn't that narrow it down to which school you go to? I could be mistaken though, maybe you just got outbid by other people?

The consensus seems that across the board transfers are not doing as well as expected. The TLS consensus pre-ITE was that top grades at lower ranked schools = median at transfer school. However since median is dicey for biglaw that means things are bad for transfers.

For a complete pessimist (or maybe realistic view for c/o 2011), transferring = buying an interview with firms that otherwise wouldn't go to your OCI nor look at your resume. I think it definitely matters what school you transferred from. For example if you're targeting NY and you did extremely well at say Cardozo and transferred to Chicago, the firm will be able to compare your grades with past Cardozo hires. If you're transferring from a school that has zero to no alums at the firm, they have nothing to compare you to and might not take the chance when there are boatload of other students to choose from.

Thank you for not trying to turn this into a guessing game as to what school I attend. I am trying to share as much information as possible without outing myself.

Also, I agree with everything you said. I think one thing that hurt me a lot in terms of the market my t3 was in was transferring because it cut off all ties I had to that state (and being that my old school was regionally strong there I'm sure employers were concerned that I was trying to summer over there and then jump ship as soon as I could, which is actually pretty accurate).

chadwick218 wrote:I have a # of friends at NU that had very similar transfer experiences. This is not uncommon. During OCI, many firms failed to give full faith and credit to transfers from lowly rated T2's that finished in the top 5-10%. The thought process being that the firms wouldn't have hired them in the first place so why hire them now just b/c they transfered to NU.

THAT BLOWS; reading threads on here normally you would think transferring up is like the ultimate score.